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The UHF channel 51 allocation in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale market was previously occupied by WSMS-TV, an independent station that debuted on December 6, 1968 under the ownership of Gold Coast Telecasting; the station would cease operations on August 10, 1970 due to financial issues.

The current station on channel 51 was developed after another company[who?] acquired the channel 51 license in January 1972. WSCV first signed on the air on February 14, 1972 as WKID-TV. Operating as an independent station, it maintained a bilingual format featuring a mix of English and Spanish language programming. The station would later be acquired by an investment group headed by William F. Johns and Alvin Koenig in 1976, after WKID's previous owners went bankrupt.

During the late-1970s, WKID aired Spanish language programming during the daytime and a slate of older English-language films and sitcoms during the overnight hours. With all other Miami-area stations having signed off the air during the overnight hours, WKID's late-night programming reached cult status among South Florida residents who stayed up at night. Dubbed The All Night Show, WKID's late-night block consisted of a mix of films, television series, music videos and classic cartoons, along with special guests. The All Night Show was hosted by Dave Dixon, an icon from that era of South Florida UHF television. The All Night Show is believed to have served as the inspiration for USA Network's similar late-night block, Night Flight.[citation needed] During this era, cable providers that carried competing independent WCIX (channel 6, now CBS owned-and-operated station WFOR-TV on channel 4) outside of the Miami market (especially in the Tampa and Orlando markets) carried WKID during the overnight hours, after WCIX signed off for the night. WKID-TV was also the first affiliate of sorts for what would become the Christian Television Network, as the network purchased a block of evening airtime every night on channel 51 prior the establishment of its first station, WCLF in Tampa.[1]

In 1980, the group sold WKID to Oak Industries, a cable television equipment manufacturer and owner of ONTV, a subscription television service that was carried during the evening hours, which could only be viewed for a monthly fee, and required a set-top decoder box and outdoor antenna for adequate reception. The station's programming during this period included business news programming from the Financial News Network during the daytime hours, a horse racing show hosted by Bob Savage in the early evening, and ON-TV programming at night. With the expansion of cable television in the Miami area, ON-TV proved to be an ill-fated venture and was dropped by WKID-TV in the mid-1980s.

Julio Rumbaut, an American Spanish-language media entrepeuneur, led the acquisition and operations of the station by Blair Broadcasting (under its BlairSpan subsidiary), which changed the station's callsign to WSCV (its call letters, when pronounced in Spanish read "Doble-U Ese Se Ve," which is translated into English as "that one is seen"); the station switched to a Spanish-language programming format in the spring of 1985 with WSCV positioning its programming as a local, independent Miami-targeted alternative to Spanish International Network (now Univision) affiliate WLTV (channel 23).

WSCV terminated its analog signal, on UHF channel 51, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.[3] The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 52, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, to UHF channel 30. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display WSCV's virtual channel as 51.

WSCV presently broadcasts 17 hours of locally produced news and talk programming each week (with three hours on weekdays and one hour each on Saturdays and Sundays); in addition, the station produces the half-hour entertainment and lifestyle program Acceso Total (airing weekdays at 10:00 a.m.).

The station launched its news department in 1987, when it debuted a half-hour 6:00 p.m. newscast, titled Noticiero 51 a las 6; it was anchored by Cuban-born Lucy Pereda and Eduardo Arango. Pereda left WSCV the following year to co-anchor Univision's first morning program, Mundo Latino, alongside Frank Moro, a Cuban telenovela actor who left to return to acting in Mexican telenovelas. He was substituted by Jorge Ramos (who later became Univision's main news anchor). WSCV hired Maria Montoya, a former actress who had arrived in Miami as part of the Mariel boatlift of 1980 and Ambrosio Hernandez, who had worked at several stations in Chicago, to complement the team, which included weather anchor Angel Martin and sportscaster Rene Giraldo. Telemundo president Julio Rumbaut hired Montoya and Hernandez, both of whom would represent the longest-serving anchor team in the United States in any language, until Montoya was fired in late 2013; Giraldo later became a sports anchor for the Telemundo network.

WSCV was positioned as the "Cuban" station in stark contrast to WLTV, which aired Mexican programming and was therefore perceived, in some circles, as less anti-Castro. In 1988, Alfredo Duran, who was recently hired as the station's general manager, announced that well-known WLTV reporter Alina Mayo Azze was hired by WSCV. Azze's heralded arrival was diminished when Duran announced the hire of WLTV main anchor Leticia Callava to co-anchor the station's 6:00 and 11:00 p.m. newscasts with Azze. Callava, regarded as the most respected news anchor on Spanish-language television, was fired by WLTV management shortly after Duran defected to Telemundo. Callava and Duran had become a couple at the time, and this triggered a series of events that would change the Latin television landscape in Miami. Several news reporters and both Montoya and Hernandez bolted to WLTV as the station tried to reinvent itself.

Under Duran's oversight, the station's newscasts were retitled Noticentro 51, with both Azze and Callava as its lead anchors, becoming the first all-female anchor team on a Spanish language newscast in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale market. The revamp would help WSCV's fortunes in local news and earned the station 12 Emmy Awards during the late 1980s. Two years later, in 1990, WSCV announced that Mayo Azze would depart the station. Several months later, Mayo Azze was hired as anchor at WLTV. Argentinan news anchor Nicolas Kasanzew, who became famous covering the Falklands War (Spanish: Guerra de las Malvinas/Guerra del Atlántico Sur) for the state-run network ATC (Argentina Televisora Color), was then hired as co-anchor of the evening newscasts. Kasanzew was later removed as anchor, after Ambrosio Hernandez was re-hired by WSCV.

The backstage drama between Callava and Hernandez was more intriguing than what viewers saw on the station's newscasts. It was rumored that each would count the stories assigned to them to be on even ground. In 2001, as part of a strategy by Telemundo management to expand local news programming on its stations (with similar expansions on its owned-and-operated stations in Chicago, New York City and Los Angeles), WSCV added a two-hour weekday morning newscast and half-hour weekend evening newscasts at 6:00 and 11:00 p.m. The station re-hired Maria Montoya to serve as anchor of the morning newscast at 11:30 am other anchor did the weekend two hour morning edition.

In 2003, Montoya was reassigned to the 6:00 and 11:00 p.m. newscasts, being repaired with Ambrosio Hernandez. After spending 25 years as Miami's most well-known television personality (having spent ten years at WLTV and fifteen at WSCV), Leticia Callava's contract was not renewed when allegedly she refused to take a pay cut (Callava has since become the television spokesperson for Humana-owned Miami healthcare conglomerate Care Plus; while Duran is now serves as general manager for E! Latin America. WSCV's late evening newscast registered its first ever first place win in the 11:00 p.m. slot, beating other area newscasts including its main Spanish language rival WLTV in May 2006; the station has won the 11:00 p.m. time period many times since, most recently during the May 2013 sweeps period.

On March 5, 2008, WSCV became the first Spanish-language television station in the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale market (and the state of Florida) to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. WSCV's HD production equipment was among the assets that were to be acquired in a proposed 2008 sale of sister station WTVJ to Post-Newsweek Stations (owner of ABC affiliate WPLG, channel 10), which would later be terminated due to financial issues and a lack of FCC approval. For over a year, the station's newscasts were broadcast in 16:9widescreen high definition, while all other programming continued to air in upconverted and pillarboxed4:3standard definition until April 23, 2009, when Telemundo became the first Spanish-language network in the United States to carry programming in HD.

In June 2013, after about a year or more of having aired its early evening newscast in the earlier timeslot due to movies airing in the 6:00 p.m. timeslot on Saturday and Sunday evenings, WSCV officially announced that its weekend early evening newscast would move a half-hour early from 6:00 to 5:30 p.m. full-time (the change concurred with the network's decision to move certain weekend afternoon programs into the 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time hour, including the newscast's Saturday lead-in, Ritmo Deportivo). On October 18 of that year, Maria Montoya abruptly left the station, breaking up the longest tenured anchor duo in South Florida, in order "to pursue other opportunities" in a statement by station management; Montoya left the station without conducting a formal departure.[4] On that evening's 6:00 p.m. newscast, Ambrosio Hernandez solo anchored the broadcast, and after a quick introduction, simply mentioned that Montoya was "not here." Buenos Dias Miami anchor Daisy Ballmajo was appointed as weeknight co-anchor on October 28. On April 24, 2014, WSCV debuted a new set with monitors big TV's, new weather center, sports center, live pictures in the background through a monitor in the back, similar to WNBC-TV and KNBC-TV, Chicago's WMAQ-TV, Los Angeles' KVEA-TV, Texas stations KXAS-TV and KXTX-TV and sister station WTVJ-TV. On November 3 along with 13 other station it will launch new 5:30 P.M. news along with weekday 6:00 P.M. shifting Al Rojo Vivo to 4 P.M. and Caso Cerrado to half-hour at 5:00 P.M.